


Swaying Source of Light

by Stidean



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Blainofsky Never Happened, Broken Dave, Burt's Dead, But Neither is it Harsh, Dark, Dave Never Left, Hurt No Comfort, Klaivorce, M/M, Not Blaine or Klaine Friendly, Old Age Comes with its Own Horrors, Past Prostitution, kurt is back in lima, kurtofsky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-26 15:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5010076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stidean/pseuds/Stidean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave is a broken man and Kurt isn't sure he's up to the task of propping him up.<br/>It’s Monday, February 14th. 2026.<br/>Dave and Kurt are 32. It's been 16 years since that hospital bed, 9 years since Dave gave up on College, almost 7 years since Kurt's Divorce and 6 and a half years of random motel meetings for both of them.<br/>It's simple:<br/>Twice a month on average at a clean motel room just outside Lima. Kurt picks the day and tells Dave by text no less than 8 hours before. They don’t ever talk on the phone. They don’t say much beyond what courtesy demands once they are in the room. Kurt waits for Dave, never the other way around. They have sex. Dave leaves first.<br/>This time it's different. This time, Dave asks for something he may not have the right to ask for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter I

**Author's Note:**

> This came about partially from my own life and partially inspired from a devastating short fic by [**vkdemon**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/vkdemon/pseuds/vkdemon) called [**Love is Madness**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/519102)  
>  It's all sad and terrible and contains very little happiness.

Kurt’s father’s death was what brought him back to Lima for good at the age of 26. At least that was the official line on the subject. Kurt’s fashion career did not take off after he abandoned his singing aspirations completely for the chance to become a designer, and both paths became like a bored housewife’s hobby while she lived off of her husband’s dime; an indignity he felt much too often. They became something to brag about every time there was even the slightest achievement to report on, and for the husband to approve of with a big voice and much fanfare. Blaine succeeded astonishingly well, on the other hand. As if backed by some unseen hand belonging to a powerful patron. Kurt always joked there was black magic involved, but the joke turned sour and began to be repeatedly mentioned, with piercing spite, over precariously held martini glasses, when they were entertaining; Kurt being the host to Blaine’s celebrated accolades. The joke was no longer funny when the situation reminded Kurt too much of an Edward Albee play: Too much like “Claire and Edna” or “Martha and George”. They ended up both having tacky affairs and the situation became so utterly repulsive to Kurt he simply did not come back from Lima after his father’s funeral and divorced Blaine by proxy, letting the lawyers do the talking. Five years on stage, and they used understudies for the final performance.  
  
Carole handled losing Burt very badly. Becoming a widow to two wonderful men and losing her son in between, had shattered her, and Kurt decided to move back in and do the best he could to prop her up. However, he left within a year and got his own place, before he started wearing hoodies as head scarves, harboring raccoons, and talking in an East Hampton’s accent. He got a job he despised, but Kurt had vowed to be as fabulous as Lima would possibly allow him to be, so he decided to utilize his decades of acquired knowledge on the subject of skin care and found himself employed by what Lima considers a Spa, but would not be good enough to service Manhattan’s high society’s newly invented dog breeds. Still, it was a paycheck, and gossip was always fun, and even useful if you learned how to utilize it.  
  
Dave, on the other hand, had never left Ohio. He dropped out of college from sheer frustration and a strong feeling of futility: after his spectacularly horrible ‘dragging-out of the closet’, his Mom couldn’t forgive Dave for “choosing a life of sin”, regardless of his pleading with her all through that following year, which he also spent recuperating and catching up with schoolwork well enough to graduate only a year after everyone. Going back to Thurston was not a possibility and neither was McKinley, so his father managed to get him some tutoring at home and taking his S.A.T.s at a school randomly chosen by the school district, out of consideration for Dave’s special circumstances. After a year, Dave stopped trying to convince his mother she was wrong, and focused on college instead. However, during his second year of college, to his surprise and astonishment, Dave’s mother changed her mind on the subject. Perplexed but relieved, he was too scared to ask her what brought about her change of heart, for fear of making her reevaluate her stance. However, little by little, he heard what led her back to embracing him as her son: as it turns out, her church pastor was replaced by a younger man who, through the confessional, tried to make her see things from a different angle. She grew ashamed for having turned her back on her son, and though she still felt he was a sinner, Dave reasoned it was as good as it was gonna get with her, and decided not to push his luck, and so his Mom moved back into the house, though there was little love left between his parents and she had done it mostly out of convenience.  
  
But, as the saying goes (which his Grandma was always quick to quote), what God gives with one hand, he takes with the other. During the summer before his last year of college, his mother and father started acting strangely. They would joke about it at first: misplaced keys, things being put in places they had no reason to be placed in (like the remote in the fridge, the dog leash hung on a hanger in the downstairs coat closet, the salt and pepper shakers inside the living room drawers) and, most worryingly of all, they both suffered from bouts of aphasia. Dave went away, at the end of the break, trying to forget the image of his Dad relieving himself one morning by standing on the front porch and pissing out onto the lawn, convincing himself it was just stress related to the last four years. But it was dementia that was to blame for his Dad’s behaviour, and the early stages of Alzheimer’s were responsible for his Mom’s. Dave felt there wasn’t much point to college anymore, and left in the middle of his penultimate semester. Because although there was some provision set aside from his father’s insurance and retirement fund, his mother had accrued no such benefits by being a (somewhat) loving mother and housewife, and the money had to be made somehow. With two housebound parents to take care of and provide with home-care during the day, Dave did odd jobs: plumbing, handyman; for a short time he serviced guys at the bathroom in ‘Scandals’ (which was now called ‘Veronica’s’), till the owner got a whiff of it and threw him out on his ass, banning him from ever coming back. Three years ago, he decided to start working on getting an online degree; just far enough to get himself a coaching position with McKinley.  
He keeps out of the locker rooms as much as possible.  
  


* * *

  
For Kurt and Dave it was their usual deal. It worked for them. It had worked for them for almost 7 years, since Kurt’s divorce.  
  
The first time had been purely by accident. Both of them bumping into each other at ‘Scandals’’ replacement, ‘Veronica’s’ (after it was shut down for selling alcohol to minors), three months after Kurt ended up back at Lima. Dave was sitting with his back to the bar, watching the guys dance, and had the brim of his baseball cap pulled down low to avoid being recognized in case the owner decided to take a look at the patrons if he felt like taking someone home that night. Kurt recognized him, though.  
  
“So was I right? Is that why you’re wearing the hat?” After a small pause he asked further, with a nasty smile, “Bald or balding? You can be honest with me.” Kurt had hit a sore point, even more painful than he could have imagined, insulting Dave by bringing up, not just one but two, very dark episodes in Dave’s past, which made him extra hostile.  
  
“Better than a failed marriage to a self-centered prick.” Dave took a sip of his beer. “But then again, he sure could sing and dance real swell, and that’s all that really matters in a marriage, huh?” Kurt was noticeably taken slightly aback. He’d become somewhat rusty in repartee, his years with Sebastian long behind him. “And no, I’m not fucking bald or balding. Just trying to lay low. Owner ain’t exactly a friend.”  
  
“What did you do? Not call him back the next day?” Kurt added flippantly.  
  
“He caught me selling blowjobs to patrons in the bathroom.” Dave said after a beat, and he had no idea what made him say it. It was part sick pride, part shock value, part desire to shut Kurt up; and it worked. Kurt didn’t talk for quite some time but neither did he move away. Just sat, staring and judging quietly and intently. Dave did not look back, trying to appear casual about the whole matter, staring at the dance-floor.  
  
“Why… why would you do that, Dave?”  
  
“None of your damn business.” He responded, as he turned his gaze back at Kurt. “Now; you gonna buy me a drink or are we gonna do this sober?”  
  
Kurt wasn’t sure how it was that they had ended up back at Dave’s place and in the sack, preempted by the incredibly cinematically-clichéd make out during which Dave struggled with his keys in the door, both of them stumbling into and through the apartment (which Dave would give up 2 months later to reluctantly move back in with his parents), carelessly knocking things over till they reached the bed. He couldn’t blame his impaired judgment leading to it, and it certainly wasn’t Dave’s “persuasive and flirtatious conversation”, since the man had barely spoken to him while they were drinking, after that crass remark to “do this sober”. It wasn’t just being horny either: until his meaningless affair, which was meant to hurt Blaine more than provide Kurt with any kind of fulfillment, he had never slept with people unless there was a strong emotional connection. He wasn’t a prude, it’s just not something he felt very comfortable doing.  
  
The second time took place two months after their first encounter, and after Kurt had thought up the parameters by which they would meet every single time afterwards, with just tiny modifications here and there: twice a month on average at a clean motel room just outside Lima. Kurt picks the day and tells Dave by text no less than 8 hours before. They don’t ever talk on the phone. They don’t say much beyond what courtesy demands once they are in the room. Kurt waits for Dave, never the other way around. They have sex. Dave leaves first.  
  
This time was different. Dave was waiting for Kurt.  
  
It’s Monday, February 14th.  
  
“Dave, what a… what are you doing here already? I told you, 18:30.” Kurt exclaimed in surprise in a near whisper.  
  
Dave was sitting facing the door, on the left corner at the foot of the bed, no light in the room, except for the red bulb Dave usually brought with him to put into the bedside lamp, and the motel’s neon sign shining on and off intermittently, its light coming in from outside and through the windows of the room facing it. His head was down; his hair, having grown a bit longer since he was a teenager, was obscuring his face; his right hand moved from his lap to his eyes, rubbing the tension away. The lingering silence and oddly angled shadows cast by the red and teal lights, emanating from the lamp and motel’s turquoise–coloured neon sign, respectively, gave the whole experience of finding Dave already there an unsettling quality and lent it the appearance of a dark and gloomy scene; something out of ‘Mulholland Dr.’  
  
“I just… I just really needed to see you, Kurt.” Dave struggled out of himself.  
  
“Well, there isn’t gonna be much to see while I prep.” Kurt responded, in a matter-of-fact tone. “It’s why we do… *ahem*… it’s why we do the things we do, you know, the way we do them, Dave. It’s timed. Always has been: by the time you arrive, I’m ready to go, out of these ridiculous spa-white uniform, so you don’t have to just sit around while I douche and shower off the stench of the pathetic excuse for a spa I work at.” Kurt felt it was better to be just upfront about the whole process, rather than fluster and mumble around it.  
  
“I’m not sure this is what I want tonight.”  
  
“Wha- wait, what? Then why didn’t you tell me before? I can’t afford to blow half a tank of gas to come out here if we’re not gonna do our thing.”  
  
“Can’t we, I don’t know…” Dave couldn’t quite put it to words without thinking it sounded pathetic.  
  
“You want to what, Dave?”  
  
“Just… maybe do more than what we do.”  
  
“What? You want to what? You wanna talk? Is that it? You want to share? Make this into something it isn’t, all of a sudden? You know what this is, Dave: this is convenient. It’s simple and uncomplicated. I don’t need to add cheap sentiment to the proceedings. You got a great dick. I got an itch that no one in this town, as far as I know, can scratch. Dildos lose their appeal after a while.” Kurt was now misguidedly going for crass to shake Dave out of his mood.  
  
“So, what? That’s all I am? A walking, very quiet, almost life-like, dildo?” Dave didn’t raise his voice and instead just sounded flat and resigned.  
  
“You wanted love, David? Is that it?” Kurt replied, with a quiet and mollifying tone, despite his frustration.  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“You’re an overgrown child, Dave. Of course you don’t know what you want.” Kurt answered him dismissively, but still made his way towards the bathroom to prepare. Dave followed his lithe figure with his eyes, turning his head as Kurt slowly made his way.  
  
“I just needed something I thought you could give me. What do you even know of my life?” Dave almost whispered to himself as he turned his head back and lowered it to look at his hands yet again, lying limp between his denim covered thighs. Kurt stopped just before the bathroom door, put down his overnight bag, turned and approached the bed while cautiously keeping his distance, as he crossed his arms.  
  
“Nothing, Dave. I know nothing about it, and I can’t say I’m too bothered by it. It’s not that I can’t care, Dave, it’s that I can’t afford to care. Not at this stage, anyway. I can’t have you laying some of your burden down on me.”  
  
“Why the hell not?” Dave raised his voice slightly before lowering it again to his resigned and defeated tone. “People do it all the time. They share the load. It helps.”  
  
“Find a shrink.” Kurt said dismissively and with an air of finality.  
  
“It’s not the same, and you know it, Kurt. You’ve been in therapy long enough to know that.”  
  
“I know that if nothing is going to happen toni-…”  
  
“I didn’t say that nothing was going to happen.” Dave’s tone grew more and more frustrated. “I said I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to. I just really wanted to see you tonight.”  
  
“You keep saying that but… wait. Wait, wait, wait. Tonight? Is this… is this about Valentine’s Day? What you said back then? Did you decide to tell me now that you never moved on?!”  
  
“Yes.” Kurt hadn’t expected Dave to admit that without tap-dancing around it. “You choose the date, Kurt. You always choose the date. And you chose today; today, of all days. It’s Monday, Kurt. I never see you on Mondays.”  
  
“So you thought, what? You thought it had meaning? Did it ever occur to you that I might be just that pathetic and that for me, this, is no more than just a very sad Valentine’s Day treat?”  
  
“7 years, Kurt. I never see you on a Monday unless it falls on either Valentine’s Day, your birthday or, and this one shocked me cause I had no idea you even knew when it was, my birthday. 7 years of you celebrating little occasions by seeing me. I kept track. I noticed. I always see you on these occasions. Rest of our encounters are sporadic. But not these days. You choose them, and you choose them carefully.”  
  
“So? So what? So, this means I love you, does it?” Kurt raised his voice in frustration at being found out.  
  
“No. It means you could. It means you do care. You care to make me feel just a little bit special when it’s my birthday. You think that after seven years of us doing this, I wouldn’t notice that I get to see you during February more often than any other month? So you can help take my mind off of what I did 16 years ago, the week after Valentine’s Day?”  
  
“David.” Kurt huffed his breath in frustration. “Dave. It’s all I can give you. I can’t… I can’t take your burden and share mine. I’ve done that already. It’s done. It’s behind me. Now all I have and all I want is this. I really wouldn’t want to change it.”  
  
“You asked me once why I did what I did at ‘Veronica’s’. You never asked me since.”  
  
“It’s none of my business.”  
  
“Did you ever hear about what happened to my parents?”  
  
“No more than the occasional remark about that ‘Poor Karofsky Boy’. Nothing more specific. Word travels fast in Lima if you care to listen to it, but I was never much…”  
  
“Liar. You know. Why do you persist in trying to pretend you don’t care?”  
  
“I told you. Because I can’t afford to care.” Putting as much emphasis on the words ‘can’t’, ‘afford’, and ‘care’, as he could muster, without coming off ridiculously dramatic.  
  
“But I need you to, Kurt. I need you to, because I don’t know for how long I can keep doing this while expecting you to give me some sign that you know what I am going through and that you care just slightly.” Kurt was fidgeting: ‘This is it. This is his breaking point. I either let this run through or I risk taking him on and adding his misery to my own.’ Kurt was begging Dave, with his eyes, not to call his bluff.  
  
“This is where I leave you, Kurt… Yeah. This, this is where I leave you. I’ll see you around.” Dave slowly gets up, still hoping he won’t make it to the door.


	2. Chapter II

He doesn’t.  
  
“Wait.”  
  
“What, Kurt? Wait for what?” Dave answered without turning around.  
  
“I don’t know. I… just… just wait. I just, I just want you to wait. Just wait, please, Dave. I just want you to wait…” all this comes out as Kurt is rushing to take Dave’s hand and lead him back to the bed. He sits him down and Kurt tentatively sits himself down as well, still holding Dave’s hand. After a long pause, while he stroked Dave’s work-weathered hands, Kurt was willing to go back on the issue and he finally asked Dave.  
  
“So why did you do it? Why did you do that? At ‘Veronica’s’.”  
  
“You know why, Kurt.”  
  
“O.K. yes. Yes, I have heard, Dave. I’ve shut my ears to it as much as I could but it’s impossible in this town. Carole has sent her concern and regards many times but I just kept it to myself. Too embarrassed to admit that not only I know, but that she knows as well. Not just about your parents, but our arrangement, as well.” Dave smiled at that and exhaled his amusement in a huff. “She’s your loudest champion, by the by. Well, in all fairness, your only champion, since no one else knows about this except Rachel, and she isn’t exactly thrilled about it. She’s loyal to Blaine, who’s still her friend, though she does admit she’s glad we ended it, knowing the whole story. As for Carole, she kept nudging me to take this further than a bi-monthly thing. No judging on her part. She just wanted to see me happy and thought this would make me happy.”  
  
“She meant me, yes? That I could make you happy.”  
  
“Yes.” Kurt admitted somewhat reluctantly.  
  
“And could I?”  
  
“I don’t know, Dave. You can’t ask that so soon. And I can’t assure you that THIS is even happening. All I’ve done is stop you from leaving. I don’t know where it’s gonna go from there.”  
  
“You’ve done me wrong, though. You do realize that, right?”  
  
“How have I done you wrong?” Kurt asked, just a bit affronted. “I’m not entitled to keep a relationship a certain way? Like I said, this was convenient and…”  
  
“No. No, no, I don’t... I don’t mean, like… Friendzoning, or rather, in our case… I guess you could call it Screw-Man’s-Land. Could that be a thing..? I don’t know. The point is, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just, well, you’re the only relationship I have ever had.” Kurt looked doubtful. “Think about it, Kurt. I spent a year and a half recuperating, then came the growing pains out of the closet, college and discovering gay sex, no time to consider settling down into a relationship so quickly; for me it was like a kid discovering candy but then being told to choose only one kind. And then my parents’ illnesses, and the pressure all of that added to my life, then dropping out and taking care of them. And then you happened. Nowhere in between was there a relationship.” Kurt ingested all of it in, the timeline of events he hadn’t acquainted himself with, and also feeling somewhat selfishly happy Dave never had anyone else throughout their time together.  
  
“So, no, I didn’t mean that you setting boundaries was unfair on me, since I could have walked away at any point. But you robbed me of something most people take for granted when entering a new relationship, or, in my case, A relationship. I never got to introduce you to all the things I like. All the movies I love and music I listen to. My habits, my likes and dislikes. You don’t know my morning routine, you don’t know what I do to cheer myself up. My favourite movie, band, song… it’s such an exciting thing to get to do. To tell someone about something that excites you, and to see their faces light up when they go ‘Oh, yeah. I TOTALLY love that too!’, or even arguing about why the thing I like is SO much better than the thing they like… I just wish you’d have let me do that. Even just a little.”  
  
“We can still do that, Dave. I just need to go slow. I can’t go from nothing to everything. I have to be eased into it.”  
  
“Like my parents into a warm bath…” Dave said off-handedly, while Kurt narrowed his eyes in a cringe immediately afterwards. “Sorry. That was… in poor taste. It’s a coping mechanism I developed, my shrink says. Gallows’ humor. Well, not exactly gallows.” Dave took a long breath in, perhaps to calm himself. “I have lived twice, you know. I mean, I don't mean, like, past lives. I mean... I don't know… I don’t know what I mean. It’s just that… you see… see, it’s usually the reverse."  
  
"What is?"  
  
"Well. Our parents, if they care enough, if they are involved enough, they go through two lives' worth of horror and pain, if we get to have their sympathy: they suffer for their woes, and then they suffer for ours as well. Until we replace them, if we become caring parents ourselves. People say we are the sum of our parents but I think the reverse is also true. Our parents are the sum of us; of our experience. Of course, I could never do things in the right order and have by now lived the horrors of my life and theirs: the fights, the cleaning, of them and after them, the pill diet, the sadness, feeding them, the memory of who they used to be, the frustration, the disgusting and… and shameful yet overwhelming urge that you never EVER give into… to…” Dave stopped himself, struggling to get his words out, the feeling of utter disgrace gripping him tightly by the throat, making it hard to even breathe out what he wanted to say. But he fought back against it as hard as he could, so he could do what he promised himself he’d do if Kurt ever gave him the chance to finally share the burden.  
  
“What… what do you mean? Which urge?”  
  
“To respond with violence… just to quiet them,” he uttered, in a hushed and shame-filled voice. Dave took a moment before continuing. “Because it's been a long day and they are acting up for no reason and trying to pee, or worse, in a drawer, or because they took off their adult diapers or because they are certain you promised you'd take them for ice cream, even though they can't have dairy and sugar. And you sit there; keeping your hands to your damn self. You sit there, and you try to work out who they imagine you to be. If the promise was made to your 7-year-old Mom about 50 years ago or so, or if they imagined it. Or if they are trying to manipulate you. You always wonder if they are trying to manipulate you. And they cry like children, and it breaks your heart. And you sometimes scream or even make empty threats at them, and... I... I can't, Kurt. I can't do it for much longer. I am so tired and so unhappy and they were always so happy to see me when they were semi-lucid, but they didn't have the vocabulary to express it anymore, so they slurred through it and they tell you they love you, over and over again, because to them that’s all that matters… what they think is the most important thing for you to hear while they can say it, and they cry more. And I am breaking K-Kurt.” Dave’s breath caught. There was no way of stopping it now, the inundation; the torrential outpouring of day-to-day horror; the sickening and scarring happenings, and the tarnished and tainted memories. It was all tumbling out but there was no respite found the further he went. Books and movies lied to him, and relief didn’t come.  
  
“Kurt. I am breaking and I don't know how long I can go on with this before I have to put them in a place where they will know no one, and they will eventually forget each other entirely; where the staff will continue to sit them together in the day room, because that’s the way they received them; a package deal, they came as a pair. Places that stink of urine and disinfectant, to cover up the stench of human waste. Where I will visit them less and less because as awful as I might feel for them and how much their lives have fractured, my self-preservation instincts will keep me away from them for longer and longer periods just so I can remain sane. I almost... I almost wish I hadn't made things right with my mother..."  
  
"David..."  
  
"I know, I... I know this is awful but... it's honesty hour, Kurt; and it would have made it so much easier for me to be mean and spiteful if she had cut me off completely. I would have let her sister take the burden (she moved in with her after she left us)… or maybe my grams... no... no, probably not. But I wouldn't have made a good carer. Too much anger. Things change but sometimes they don't. I don't know how much longer I can go on doing this and I don't know if I've only gotten this far because of you. I have nothing else. I'm a football coach for a team I don't believe in, at a school I hated attending every damn second of my teenage years. I am going bankrupt, fast, and have had to pick up plumbing again just to keep afloat, but I'll eventually lose the house and end up with nothing after the sale, just so I can cover the medical costs my parents have run up, and will continue to run up. They will go into a nursing home which I will be constantly suspicious of. Every visit, I will check them for marks, bruises... I will be hostile towards the staff without provocation just because I will assume they are being negligent and careless. I'll start keeping track of my visiting balance 'How many times a year do I have to visit to make sure the staff knows my parents have someone who will notice abuse?' And what if the injuries are… K-Kurt, what if..? What if it’s not bruises..? What if they… What if they end up… touching them and… I…"  
  
"Christ, David... I had no idea. I… I mean... when... when my Dad... when he went, well, there was dignity in it. It was quick, he said his goodbyes. Me and Carole. We cried, we let go. We got to grieve. You are mourning for your parents while they are still alive. You are mourning every single day and you won’t get to stop till they are physically gone or until you’ve let them go.”  
  
“It’s the weirdest shit that gets me going now, these days. The weird stuff that comes out of left field and you don’t even know what provoked it. I don’t think I ever mentioned it but my mother was an opera singer by training. She gave all that up, to be a wife and mother, though, but the singing never left her. Two years ago she sang to my father. We both cried like lost babes, but it was the weirdest thing: she was looking right through him. Like he wasn’t there. Like all that was there was his empty chair.”  
  
“Do you remember the name of the piece?”  
  
“I tried Shazaming the last few notes while she was singing, but I don’t think it works without the music.”  
  
“Anything at all you remember from it? Words?”  
  
“Well, I think it was French, because I don’t think there are Spanish operas.”  
  
“Why Spanish?”  
  
“Well, I only picked up one word but it’s a Spanish word. The Spanish word for sad. Triste.”  
  
“Was it… Dave, was it ‘Tristes Apprêts’, by any chance?”  
  
“It might be. Can you… can you sing a bit of it? If you’re not too embarrassed…” Kurt hesitated. After years keeping his songs to himself it felt odd to sing to Dave, now, in a dingy motel. Even so, he cleared his throat and started on the first few notes before Dave enthusiastically told him that it was the right tune and that he had sung it beautifully.  
  
“Dave, that’s… that’s really beautiful. That she sang it, I mean…” Kurt hesitated to say anymore but Dave noticed.  
  
“You look a bit doubtful, Kurt. Is there something wrong with the song? Did she sing something inappropriate?”  
  
“Well, Dave, the song… it’s a eulogy. It comes from a French opera called ‘Castor and Pollux’. Ever heard of them?”  
  
“Can’t say that I have.”  
  
“Well, you heard of Helen of Troy, yes?”  
  
“Yeah, of course.”  
  
“Well, she was born from a woman called Leda, who was seduced by Zeus, when he appeared to her as a swan. Yes, I know, she had sex with a swan,” Kurt smiled, “go figure. Anyways, she gave birth to four children by laying two eggs, each one with two yolks. Two children from Zeus: the future Helen of Troy, and her twin, the divine and immortal Pollux. And two children from her husband: the very mortal Castor and Clytemnestra. Castor and Pollux are both in love with Telaira, a young maiden, but she only loves the mortal Castor, who, unfortunately, at the start of the opera, has died a Hero’s death, and Telaira… well, she sings that beautiful aria your mother sang to your father, to mourn Castor’s passing. In it, her grief is so strong, she renounces light forever: Et je renonce à la lumière.” Kurt sang, and yet Dave appears more confused than moved by his mother’s actions.  
  
“But… but she doesn’t. I mean, I thought she didn’t love him anymore.” Kurt was bewildered as to what Dave was referring.  
  
“Who, Dave? Your mother?”  
  
“Yeah. I mean, not hating, just… I don’t know. The marriage had fizzled out by the time she came back home when we patched things up.” Explained Dave, still confused and trying to make sense of things.  
  
“Well, time doesn’t work the same way for her as it does for us. Things are muddled. While singing, she might have felt as she did when young, but sang for the grief she naturally feels as an adult.”  
  
“Christ… It’s all a stew, things overlap… Fuck… fuck, Christ, Kurt, this isn’t what I wanted us to do when I was talking about sharing.” Dave said with an air of bitter humour as he turned his sad smile towards him. And Kurt kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm anally retentive about these kinds of things, there is a timeline to all of these events, all set up against birthdays and proper dates.


End file.
